The Battle Between God’s Word and Man’s Word Continues

Not long ago, BioLogos (a group promoting theistic evolution) published an article by Pastor Richard Dahlstrom of Seattle, who unsurprisingly for this theologically compromising group, made a case for why evolution should be mixed with Scripture.

Pastor Dahlstrom shares the testimony of how a college student he knows came to hold to evolutionary creation (which is really just theistic evolution)—and it’s just another confirmation of what I’ve been saying about so-called “Christian” colleges and universities.

Pastor Dahlstrom explains that this college student started out as a biblical creationist, until she took a science course at a compromised Christian college:

I was talking with some people in my church recently about a significant moment that occurred when their daughter, raised in Christian schools her whole life, came home from college. She’d taken a science course at her Christian university where she encountered, for the first time, a thoughtful and reasoned explanation of evolution—and how, far from being contradictory to the Biblical accounts of creation, there were powerful markers pointing toward harmony.

As internally coherent as all this might have been in a vacuum, the entire experience was devastating to her. She met with her parents one afternoon and explained what she was learning, all of which was in contradiction to her young-earth, anti-evolutionary upbringing. Silence hung over the coffee until she asked, “What else did the church lie to me about?”

Now, I’ve discussed many times on this blog that such problems that plague the majority of Christian colleges and seminaries in our country. They’ve compromised on Genesis and are ultimately teaching students that they can’t trust what God’s Word says about our origins.

But an even bigger problem that I believe this testimony highlights is the lack of apologetics teaching in the church and the home. This young woman met with her parents and told them that she concluded that the church had lied to her about the Bible. Of course, we don’t know for sure whether her parents or the church taught strong apologetics and showed how science actually confirms the Bible. But with this young woman’s reaction to taking a science course on evolution, it’s likely that she was never taught solid Bible-upholding apologetics so she could know how to defend the Christian faith against such compromise.

A few years ago, Answers in Genesis contracted with America’s Research Group to find out more about why two-thirds of young people are leaving the church by the time they reach college age, and to find out what’s being taught in America’s Christian educational institutions. The results of that research were published in my coauthored books Already Gone and Already Compromised.

Pastror Dahlstrom goes on to defend the mixing of evolutionary ideas and millions of years with Scripture, writing that people who don’t accept evolution aren’t being entirely honest with themselves:

It’s as if the church has created a “Y” in the road: intellectual integrity one way; faith the other way. Thousands stand at this crossroads the church has unwittingly created and walk away from their faith. The greatest tragedy of this departure is that the “Y” in the road is a fabrication of religionists, not a construct created by either God or the Bible.

So really, he’s accusing biblical creationists of lacking intellectual honesty and of encouraging others to abandon their own because we believe in and teach what God’s Word plainly says in Genesis. Now, Dahlstrom implies later that biblical creationists are making a belief in a young earth a salvation issue—but we have never said that it’s a salvation issue—but it is an authority issue!

You see, there is no “Y” in the road when it comes to young-earth creationism and salvation. The only “Y” in the road concerns either having faith in Christ alone, or rejecting the gospel. There are many great people of God who believe in an old earth or evolution. However, our mission at Answers in Genesis is to show why it’s necessary to take God at His Word in Genesis; otherwise, the truth of the gospel message is undermined because the authority of God is undermined when people compromise man’s word with God’s Word.

Pastor Dahlstrom’s accusations are blatantly false. There is no conflict between science and the Bible—only between evolutionary ideas and the Bible. And biblical creationists aren’t trying to make people lie to themselves about our origins. God’s Word is abundantly clear on this issue, and the scientific evidence confirms that the earth is young. The battle is one between God’s Word and man’s word—and this battle has never let up since Genesis 3.